Intel inside Mental outside

E.M.B.A for a 5 year old....no i am not kidding

2006-03-20T05:13:00.000-08:00

The "E.M.B.A." program that kicks off on a Sunday morning in the heart of Shanghai's financial district is much like any other curriculum designed to train the future business leaders of China. "We give students the tools they need to build up their confidence," says Vivian Liu, general manager of the popular two-year-old program, which has seen 1,500 participants pass through its doors. But the difference between Liu's course and others is this: when the demands of subjects like economics or communications get too taxing, her students might just respond by having a good cry and asking for their mommies. How so? They're children. The e in this E.M.B.A. program stands not for executive but early, and the oldest student in the class is age 6. Civil servant He Jiachen sends his 3-year-old, He Xingzhen, to the E.M.B.A. course while he and his wife pursue their own adult M.B.A.s. "My son is developing well," he says. "In class, he isn't afraid of giving speeches, and he likes to be a team leader in group activities."

source www.time.com

Dont know whether to laugh or cry. Seems like i have add a pretty chilled out pre-teens.

Marketing bullshit

2006-02-01T21:50:00.000-08:00

Do you know what "MMR" technology that the Allout people are talking about in their advertising campaign means - Mosquito mortality rate. How can this even qualify as a technology, isn't this supposed to be a parameter on which you judge how effective you technology is. Its like telling a new AIDS vaccine has a "HMR" technology - "Human Mortality Rate" and how absurd does that sound. ( and talking of allout - my friend who purchased one of them when they initially came to market, plugged in the machine and was anxiously waiting for a tongue to flap out and suck the mosquito that was sitting on his nose. He was soo disappointed that he actually came close to calling the customer care department. )

There are zillion technologies floating around for some zillion and odd products and most of them don't make any sense even to the most gullible customers like my friend. Shampoos and detergents are the worst, from nantechnology to iwillfightthedandruff technology every technology closely related to hair has been misused. To energy boosters in Boost to microganules in Rin ultra the con game is getting too much. Apparently these detergent people try to con people by colouring those so called micro granules in blue. I wonder how many of these companies really have a R&D department worth coming up with a better wrapping solutions for their product, leave alone ultraglistners. How many ads these days have people in white lab coats working in swanky research labs saying that national mental association endorses this particular brand of IQdropper with special action lunacy drivers as its official drug partner. If these companies really have a research labs why don't the advertisements actually take us there instead of the artificially created sets which junta know is a setup anyway.

And what is this mad craze to partner your company with any event that happens . First there was this official partner, then came the "nothing official about it" partner, then media partner and these days they have radio partners, mobile partners and all sorts of partners. I even heard "Shulab souchalaya" being the official toilet partner for National diarrhea day and Big Bubble being the official gum partner of the Indian Gum Farting squad to the recent ObnoxiousOlympics held in 2005.

Most of the ads these days are so depressing that just the name of the company on a black background will make a far better impact. The vernacular ads are totally give ups, they are an assassination on creativity ( try sitting through an add for bindhu applam and you will know the pain ). You don't need all that amount of money to create good ads, just some regular dose of good old creativity would do. The fevicol ads would have coasted same money as those of bindhu applam ads I guess. Its not that tough to create a decent ad either. Lets take bindhu applam( pappad ) as an example and try to come out with some decent ideas for an ad in the comments section, i bet we can come up with some decent stuff.

Hail Creativity !

2005 - More bad than good

2005-12-27T01:40:00.000-08:00

I ndia - is it really shinning.
N atwar - sad reminder of stinking Indian beaurocracy
T sunami - how much time will it take for the scar to heal.
E merging Midleclass - they used to sweat but now they have started to spend.
L allu maharaj gets dethroned - evolution at last gives rational thinking to voting brains.

I mrana - Raped by the society and media.Uniform Civil Code Anybody ?
N arayana Moorthy asks Gowda to shove it up his @$$.
S ania Mirza plays hard ball. She is more into hitting media people these days.
I raq - the neo Imperialism continues.
D elhi bomb blasts - Fireworks, but not an happy one.
E arthquake in Kashmir, left out in the cold.

M angal Pandey - the fall of the rising.
E quity Markets - Foreign investors loved it,Communists hated it,end of it all everybody made money.
N ew Orleans - they say it used to be a nice place.
T endulkar - piles on more records and money.
A shes - discovery of a game in the nation it was invented.
L arry Page and Sergey Brin - u can hide from the law, but not from them.

O il - every society must struggle for oil, and in the long run, it will be gone.
U nder World - Abu Salem lands in India while Dawood roams the streets of Karachi
T igers - Skin show of a different kind.
S ourav Ganguly - talks more than he plays, exit board shown.
I Pod Nano and Video - Listening Opps! sorry watching music is never going to be the same.
D am on Narmada opens - gateway to hell for pilgrims who came searching for a place in heaven.
E Commerce - from e-bay to Amazon to i-tunes, the digital shop got bigger and brasher.

Good nite 2005 and Good luck 2006

Google search

2005-12-13T03:40:00.000-08:00

A search on google on 'google search' returns around 20,700,000 hits.

Gone are those days when people used to start their essays or speeches or whatever with Webster defines blah blah blah, Webster has been replaced with google. It just stuck me how technology is seeping into every facet of human life. Primarily on the way we perceive information as such. Information is being absorbed, accumulated and dispersed faster every day and every day a new medium through which it can be dispersed is found. Each morning is becoming an information over load. If you think you are happy without all this garbage dump, then you would be forced to undergo the 'Joey effect' a lot of times.

Joey Effect: Described as an effect created on the human face when they don't know about a particular piece of fact or fiction ( in general called Information) during a conversation or discussion but is forced to cover up the ignorance with an all knowing smile. Derived from the facial expression given by Joey Tribianni in the hit sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Each day the transition of a particular event from being current to becoming history is happening faster. Today volker is hot, tomorrow he belongs to history. Can anybody tell me whats happened to Imrana now. Hello whom?. Major cause : Parasitic Journalism

Parasitic Journalism: A practice followed by current media where they cling on to a story when its new and just let it fade away after a few days( few weeks if the story is too hot). Interviews of any one related to the story or to the people who are involved in the story are recorded and made into a breaking news.
Breaking news
Natwar's sons' first cousins' baby daughter utters oil-coupon as her first word.
Natwar says no such utterance happened

PS: Hey got 78,100 hits for Parasitic Journalism

Look at the amount of personal information that we need to remember. Bank pass book number, account number, credit card number, ATM pin number, email logins and passwords etc etc etc. Organizing all these information is becoming a huge pain. I still don't know how many bank accounts I have, leave alone the account numbers. I got a rude shock that day when i got a lawyers notice regarding some dues I have to pay against a bank account which I dint even no existed.

The amount of information which we will be forced to absorb will keep becoming bigger and bigger, that at one point of time we mite want an individual google search for our personal information alone. Lets hope this doesn't happen in our lifetime and for people who believe in the concept of next birth, sorry fellas.

gossip

2005-11-11T02:08:00.000-08:00

But we're still pretty confused by Celina Jaitley. Recently, the actress said she was on top of the world, in love and in a serious relationship.

She also claimed, in the same interview, that she wants to be known for her work, not the controversies surrounding her.

You can't have it both ways, Celina.

On the one hand, you say you want to be known for your work. On the other, you claim you are in love but don't reveal the name of the person, thereby fuelling gossip. What do we do? Should we write about how unfairly you missed an Oscar nomination after your work in Jaanasheen?

We've always wondered how you landed in the sea with a violin, half-naked, despite the fact that you played a partially blind girl in the film!

Finally years of reading rediff movie colums have paid off

A page from a book called history

2005-11-02T19:54:00.000-08:00

29 th Oct 1999

Dear Diary,

As with everybody these days, we were discussing over the weekend about floating a company. Without further adieu it was decided that we start a software company. But it was decided that we would start a product company and not a services company. Now for the more difficult part - What product could we create that was not already done by Google and one that would have tremendous impact on the lives of people daily?. Many ideas were put forth. For example, a software package to maintain religious establishments was discussed and was thrown out because stuff like that already existed ( to my immense surprise I should say, religion is a big business these days but something about that fact was quite unsettling ). Ideas kept coming, absurd, impractical and down rite stupid and the routine started to get boring. Is it me or is it an empirical rule, my mind always wanders off to think about the boring MEGA-GIGA soaps aired on TV when I am bored. Then it all occurred to me like a flash, an idea so wonderful in its brilliance. Was it something about my face I don't know, every body was silent. The idea was conveyed and immediately we felt that we were on the verge of something big, very big. It was all decided - we were going to build a product that could help directors/production houses to make mega serials. We decided to call the company E-SOAP.

The product was soon completed and it was our first beta-release and the excitement in the air was quite palpable.

E-SOAP=> How may I help you?
Press N for new script.
Press A for alter new script.
Press F for adding needless time filling fillers into script.
Press S for composing song for the SOAP
Press Q to Quit

E-SOAP=>N
E-SOAP=>Type of script ( Drama, Family Drama, horror, religious ): Family Drama
E-SOAP=>Number of main Characters : 12-14
E-SOAP=> List of Characters
Grand-Father, Docile characterization. Dresses preferably Pajama and kurtha
Grand-Mother, Lot of crying involved . Big bindhi in forehead and fat.
Son 1, Henpecked and Loser in life
Daughter in Law 1, Evil shade, arrogant, and causes lot of trouble in family and trying to get conceived.
Son 2, Drunkard
Daughter in Law 2, Helpless with 2 Kids and comes from a poor family.
Daughter 1, Stays permanently in dad's house
Son In Law 1 No job, mercy of in laws
Son 3, Bachelor, epitome of manhood, good job, in love with
Son 3's Lover, Madly in love with son 3 ( name preferably should sound like Kusum ).

Saved the outline of the script to C:\Script.txt

E-SOAP=>Suggest Title
E-SOAP=>Should the title start with K?
E-SOAP=>Yes
E-SOAP=>Kuch Kuch Nahi hona Chahiye

Huge cry erupted, the first beta-test was a huge success. Language support for Hindhi,Tamil and Telugu were added in the subsequent releases. One of the most hailed feature of the product was the ability to provide fillers in between scenes.

E-SOAP=>Need Fillers
E-SOAP=>Does the house have a staircase?
E-SOAP=>Yes
E-SOAP=>Duration of filler
E-SOAP=>2mins
E-SOAP=>Character climbing down the staircase in slow motion. BGM required ( Preferably heavy percussions).
E-SOAP=>Do you want to add the filler to a template?
E-SOAP=>Yes
E-SOAP=>Name of template
E-SOAP=>Staircase
E-SOAP=>Template saved to C:\Kuch Kuch Nahi hona Chahiye\templates\Staircase.templ

Those were the most exciting days of my life. The feeling of having created a product which affected people on a daily basis, a product which made them cry, laugh and attack them at an emotional level. Then we decided to change the name of the company to Balaji TeleFilms in Hindhi and Radaan in Tamil. Rest as they say is history.

Perfect

2005-10-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

It rained like mad. The sheets of water, the cold wind, hot tomato soup, the cozy bean bag and your favorite movie and no office. It became my new barometer for an "Ideal Day". Just Perfect.

Bliss factor

2005-10-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

The dirt road leading from the backdoor of my grandma's house in Kumbakonam stretches for some 200 yards, then just ends. It feels like it has struck empty-space and you cant stop wondering whats after that. It was this curiosity during my younger years that opened me to the pleasure of flowing water. The river Kaveri, holds a very special place in my heart. It reminds me of those beautiful days I spent in my grandma's place taking bath in the river and hog like dog and sleep like a log.

Last weekend I got the chance to pay homage to those beautiful memories( Thanks to our surprisingly generous Karnataka friends). Only now I am much older, friends replaced cousins, grandma's house was much more modern and had lost the old world charm. But the feeling was the same -pure Bliss.

Crushed

2005-09-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

Most of us would have had a lots of crushes ( not the orange drink which crashed at the crate-office ) in our lives and yes its just a wonderful feeling. There were days when i would have a crush on a any girl who is within a 5ft radius of me, I miss those days badly. Those wonderful butterflies in the stomach and words stuck in the throat feelings.

Those innumerable number of glances you steal towards the road leading to connought place or the entrance of the sky eagerly expecting her arrival and blame that hard pillow when your friends enquire. Those agonizing moments you spend when she doesn't reply to your sms or mail and the innumerable number of times you check your inbox for that beautiful highlited mail you get from her. The near infinite amount of time you spend wondering over the implication of "Luv" with which she signs off her mails. Those totally illogical conclusions you derive out of a conversation which you had with her some one year back, just to convince your heart to keep alive the thin line of hope. That bewitching smile which does to your heart, what it was supposed to do. Those countless number of times you want to tell her what you feel and the countless number of times mind rejects your heart, so as not to ruin that friendship you value so much. Those de-tours which you take around the institute corridors to setup those "casual" meetings.

Those were wonderful years. I want to be eighteen again( I know u guys would be screaming, you are just 23 or 24! get a grip dude ). I want to go back in time and do it better, if only i have the chance.

Behind enemy lines

2005-09-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

Truth be told, most of the guys would give their right and left hand to be a spy when they are in their eight or ninth standard. Alistair McLean made it look cool, James Bond cooler. But these spies don't die, they don't get caught in an enemy country and spend 15 years in jail and then go on to get hanged. They instead drive hot cars and hotter girls, sip cool martinis and use cooler gadgets. How different is the real world spy than the ones seen on movies or read in books.

Imagine this situation, you are in an enemy country without help, you don't know who is you enemy or friend, you don't know when you are going to get caught, you don't know if the spy-masters of your country will help you even if you do get caught. Seems scary as hell. But what goes on in the minds of people who take on this ridiculously risky job. There is a marked difference between the jawan who is fighting on tiger hill and spy who is roaming the bazaars of Lahore. The jawan know that if he dies, his death will be honored. The nation would take notice and be proud of him, but its a totally different ball game in the case of a spy. There is no honour, there is just the pure risk of getting caught and above all an audacity to do something that 99.99999% of the population wouldn't even think of doing. And it is to this audacity that I bow my head completely.

1994, 2005 its all the same !

2005-09-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

For once I think I dont have to write something stupid beneath a pohotograph

Driving me crazy

2005-08-22T06:47:00.000-07:00

Phew ! what a crime, two weeks without any serious blogging. There are two primary reasons for that, first of all there is this work pressure and second of all , the arrival of my new car( Maruti Swift). But how could a new car prevent me from blogging, I need a reason people and this seems to be quite a valid one. Driving a car in India and more importantly Chennai is quite a madness. It was two weeks after I got my car, that I realised that I had a fifth gear. The cyclist and the pedestrians really get on to my arteries ( why should everyone always get onto my nerves, they are clogged ) if you discount the holy cow that is.

The holy cow

The holy cow, very holy as you could have figured out by now, and for that same reason I cannot drive over it and make into a delicious dish on somebody's dining table. It is deaf, blind and worse than the pedestrians when it comes to following traffic rules. The irony is you cant even fine them for jay walking.

The Pedestrian

I can understand why the holy cow never crosses using the zebra-crossing, being an animal, it may have an inherent fear for another animal. But why these pedestrians zip across the road is beyond my scope of limited intelligence. The more amazing fact is most these pedestrians are neither deaf nor blind.

The cyclist

You might want to think that the cyclist is a good guy because he is adding less of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but the glib side is that the cyclist is also adding more car driving souls into heaven. They make it a point to ride the cycle right in middle of the road and if you honk the horn, the would give you a stare which will make you feel guilty. If singles in cycle will drive you mad, imaging two people sitting and meandering down the main road.

Long live the holy cow, pedestrian and the cyclist

2005-08-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

I am really busy now a days, as it is evident from the alarming dip in my blogging frequency. When a guy like me cant take some time out to blog, then there is some serious work to be done. So as of now, I will go back and try to completing my serious work. Looking forward to the three day weekend.

Celibacy, truths and DVDs

2005-08-01T05:38:00.000-07:00

Re-telling Anecdotes quite often is a serious syndrome for old age. One that you might have experience with your grand parents and increasingly with our parents nowadays. Usually it starts with "When I was in" or "When I was ten" or "In those days" and those sorts. These are the cues for you to let your mind wander on that hot chick you saw that day on the road or keeping a count on the number of times you have heard this story before. Having said that I realized that I was telling people far too much anecdotes myself and that surely is not a good sign. So what am I doing, am I getting old. I should be making anecdotes now for god sakes and not telling it. It can mean another thing apart from getting old i.e. I have experienced a lot of things in life and there is nothing much for myself to go and make an anecdote about. But even thats not true you see, I am still a virgin. So anybody out there with a mind that could explain the phenomenon, please do so !

A short guide to long words

2005-07-20T03:36:00.000-07:00

Lot of us hear a lot of high flying talk while we are around in our companies or even during our placements in college. Literally, they mean what they are actually meant to mean. But here is a guide to what some of these corporate horse-talk actually mean.

We are extremely lucky ( or pleased) to have you on board means join our equally brainless set of employers and do some equally meaningless job.

We work at the cutting edge of technology means we maintain the web-site for Gillette or we call old couples in Oklahoma and pester them to apply for credit cards.

Your concerns will be addressed means you will not be invited to the next quarter's employee concern meeting.

We have a open door policy means you will tagged like a slave on the Amistad and forced to flash at every door or we will put checkpoints even at the door leading to the bath-rooms.

We have a flat hierarchy means there are as many steps there in the hierarchy as there are in Hogwarts.

You have to give your best means you have to sleep in a sleeping bag in your cubicle and you have to use your weekends to take your Java code to a date

On a long term means never expect a raise in salary in the coming 6 months.

Flexible timings means you should come to office three hours after sunrise and leave some three hours before the next one.

We have been taking not of your accomplishments means this is the first time I am seeing you in my life

I think this much is enough for today, my boss just came to my place and asked me to give my best for the company.

2005-07-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

May be this is my first impulsive post. You see something on screen and there is this great impulse to get online and vent out your feelings in a post of tribute and awe. Yes I was just on time to see catch the climax of the Tamil movie Mooram Pirai or Sadhma in Hindhi. Most of you would have watched that movie and that scene I am talking about. Some people call it an over act, some people say its without logic. But the hell the with all the sceptics and rajini fans, for me that one scene raises my emotions like no other scene ever has. It make me want to jump into the TV and onto the rainy railway station and give one tight slap to Sridevi. It make me want to change time and pray to god that for a "true to Indian alls well ends well" ending. In that one scene he makes Mr Bachan look like a rhodeo clown and Mr Khans like a amateur stage artist.
Thank you Kamal Hasan, thank you for giving us that one cinematic moment which we can never forget.

Random thoughts

2005-07-11T02:16:00.000-07:00

Random thought 1

I am an irritated guy nowadays, irritated of NDTV and their talk shows, irritated by the self professed human rights activist and women empowerment activist. They get on my nerves like nobody has in a long time. They come and sit in the talk shows with some weird statistics and some well founded dichotomies. Seriously they cant have it both ways.

Mrs Social Activist : Rape is the worst crime and should be dealt with severe punishments.

Mr Anchor: What kind of punishments are you talking about.

Mrs Social Activist : Severe Punishments

Mr Anchor : Are you suggesting death penalties

Mrs Social Activist : No death penalties are against human rights, its a horrible punishment.

Mr Anchor : What other type of punishments do you want for rapers ( don't get confused with the Eminem types - though i cant tell the difference between the two )

Mrs Social Activist : Life imprisonment.

Mrs Police Officer ( also in the panel ) : Life imprisonment is like a excursion, they come out in like five or six years and even in those years they get all the facilities they want.

Mrs Social Activist :hmm....severe punishment !!!

Take this another incident in California where the same environmentalists who screamed for cleaner and greener power are asking to shut down a wind mill farm because it was killing a lot of birds. Again they cant have it both ways.

Random thought 2

Read some where that on an average any conversation on the messenger will lead to Al-Queda or Iraq in 30 minutes, but in my house it just takes around 30 seconds or even less sometimes

Ma : Where is the newspaper.

Me : It should be on the center table

Ma : Its not there!!!

Me : May be the Al-Queda kidnapped it??

Random thought 3

You know how funny it is when some of those reporters in NDTV push the mike towards some unsuspecting politician and ask this quintessential question

"Did you think this issue would snowball into something this big"

Hello Excuse me ! Dear Mr/Miss/Mrs reporter/news reader please do know that you are the guys who are snowballing this issue in the first place. Lallu's fever is a national crisis, Vajpayee's diarrhea is a national calamity. Talk of snowballing.

23 Reasons to Love Sampras

2005-07-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write a post on Sampras as I was getting bit nostalgic during the wimbeldon and was digging the net for sampras quotes and articles. Here is an article by Paul Fein which says all I wanted to say and more

"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving." (Othello, Act II, Scene 3).

Superstar Pete Sampras reigns in an era when the muddled sports world celebrates anti-heroes rather than heroes and exalts personality above character. Strangely, the media act as accomplices in this farce. ESPN's so-called tribute to Sampras as one of the 50 greatest athletes of the century downplayed his virtues and belabored the "boring" image he has never shed despite its patent falseness.

Boring -- compared to what and whom? Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist and ear-biting fighter? Dennis Rodman, a cross-dressing psycho notorious for thuggish playing tactics and going AWOL? Latrell Sprewell, who sued rather than repented after attacking his coach? Europe's legions of drug-taking cyclists? Or even tennis' shamelessly boorish John McEnroe? The list of sports' louts grows, while attention seldom focuses on the good guys.

It's high time to note "Sweet Pete's" admirable traits and contributions to society, let alone sports. So, in the spirit of fairness, I offer reasons why we should love, or at least like, sport's most unsung hero.

1. His oft-stated reverence for the sporting champions of yesteryear, such as Aussies Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall and Roy Emerson.

2. He plays his most sublime tennis in Grand Slam finals, where his 12-2 career record (.857 percentage) tops all men players this century.

3. His dry wit. On the late Princess Diana's fervent rooting for him at Wimbledon, Pete joked, "I think she has a crush on me." On the recent rash of bonding among longtime American rivals Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and him, Pete quipped, "There is a lot of love in the air."

4. His exciting style of play, highlighted by his slam-dunk jump overhead, his signature flashy shot. His running forehand and diving volleys are terrific, too.

5. He doesn't duck his weakest surface, clay, unlike some past and present stars who skipped major tournaments they knew they had little chance of winning.

6. He's an athlete you can proudly tell your kids to emulate. "If there's one role model in tennis, it's Pete Sampras," said former rival Boris Becker. "He's behaving perfectly on the court, he's a nice fellow off the court, and he's playing great tennis altogether. I think he's extremely good for the game of tennis."

7. His straightforward honesty. After trailing 4-6, 2-1 in his 1999 Wimbledon quarterfinal when power-hitting Mark Philippoussis retired with a knee injury, Sampras told the media, "He was beating me."

8. He cares deeply about his family, whom he phones several times a week, and friends. Pete wept unabashedly on court against Jim Courier at the 1995 Australian open after hearing the news that Tim Gullikson, his coach and confidant, was diagnosed as having four inoperable brain tumors.

9. Unlike some players who know and care little about the pro game, Pete invariably makes insightful and fair-minded comments and proposals.

10. He courageously admits when he is wrong. Confiding that he truly missed the spirit de corps and camaraderie that the American Davis Cup team displayed while beating Britain in April, Pete asked captain Tom Gullikson if he could join the team for its big quarterfinal in July against Australia.

11. He's a serve and volleyer -- on grass and hardcourts -- and there aren't many practitioners of this adventurous but dying art left in men's tennis.

12. Surprise! Pete has his own jet. Well, OK, he leases a Cessna Citation 10 to get to tournaments. And, in an ironic role reversal, far-flashier archrival Andre Agassi sold his airplane.

13. He is a great-looking, sexy guy, especially when he takes off his shirt during matches, so say women and girls.

14. He respects his fellow players. When Pat Rafter last year said, "Pete is becoming a little bit of a crybaby," Sampras responded: "Pat is not the type of guy to say that. I'm sure it was something the media egged him on to say.... I know Pat well. He's a stand-up guy."

15. Pete has been a frequent and generous giver to worthy charities, such as the American Cancer Society, the Tim and Tom Gullikson Foundation, the Vitas Gerulaitis Youth Foundation, the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, the ATP Tour Charities program, and the Kids' Stuff Foundation.

16. His off-court training has given him a fitness level that has enabled him to win marathon matches, even though he suffers from a rare form of anemia that hampers his stamina.

17. Pete's willingness to talk candidly about both his professional career and his personal life is refreshing and humanizes him. For example, Pete said their time-consuming careers caused his recent break-up with actress Kimberly Williams and confided, "We didn't do anything wrong."

18. He nearly always exhibits excellent sportsmanship in matches, and typically limits his disappointment over a dubious line call to a look at the linesman.

19. Instead of "settling" for tons of money and the good life, as Agassi has done intermittently during his career, Pete sets his goals high and consistently works hard to attain them, tieing and breaking a host of all-time records, including Jimmy Connors' ranking No. 1 for five straight years and Emerson's 12 career Grand Slam singles titles.

20. Pete has successfully handled the pressure and demands of being No. 1, as few others in the Open Era have -- with grace, dignity and modesty.

21. His clean-cut appearance -- no earrings, no do rags, no long hair -- although he could ditch the baggy, wrinkled, too-long shorts.

22. He is quick to congratulate others when they win a big tournament, as Pete did when he phoned Agassi after his archrival won the 1999 French Open to complete a career Grand Slam.

23. Sampras is tennis' refutation of Leo Durocher's infamous "Nice guys finish last" line.

PS: I sincerely hope Federrer gets a knee injury. If he is playing the way he is, Sampras will be just a name in the history books of tennis.

Live 8

2005-07-04T05:40:00.000-07:00

Imagine if fifty thousand people died in Vancouver daily, or fifty thousand people died in Tokyo or fifty thousand people died LA daily, they would have come up with the money to stop it. Stop it now, or you will loose fifty thousand brothers and sisters each day we are contemplating

.....so went the ad during the immensely enjoyable live 8 concert. The "they" here are the G8 leaders and the "brothers and sisters" are the people in Africa who are dying daily of poverty.

Let me start with the concert, it was too good. I never imagined that I would ever watch Pink Floyd live, but strange is the way of gods. After 24 long years to see a clearly emotional Waters and Gilmore is too good an experience describe by words. They still have their magic and I could feel it, though it was through a TV. Magic is Magic. It is once in a life moment like sampras coming back to win against Courier in the 1995 Australian open or like Tendulkar smashing Akthar over the third-man in the World-Cup or anything like that. Sorry for sounding like Nirmal Shekar here, but couldn't help it.

Pink Floyd have reunited - The pigs have flown away

My bush is better than America's

Our dear old bush has promised 600 odd million to eradicate poverty in Africa, you don't have to be an economist, but 600 million dollars, are you kidding me. The dog-food industry in America is worth a couple of billion.

Hope the eight people who meet up in Scotland this weekend come up with something will remove their common surname ( read PIGS ). Go to live8 site and give you support. As the web site said -

"We don't need your money, we only need your face"

Electronified

2005-06-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

Sink-source-bjt-mems-EDIC-micro-nano-pico-falto-nato-sato-bultu-jultu Stop it!!, if u cant get the connection between all these words you are intelligent, if you can please feel free to go and die. -by Anonymous

There are some things in the world which man can understand, for the rest there is always electronics - by Srivats

One who comes from electronics, is not afraid of software - by Anniyan

I have made a lot of bad mistakes in life, being born was the worst. But closely followed by that was choosing to do electronics for my bachelor degree. Sometimes you make a decision without knowing the repercussions and somewhere down the line you just want tear your leg off and kick at yourself because of that particular decision. Well electronics was one such.

Electronics is a case of a perfect illusion. Its like Anna Kournikova, its there, it looks beautiful, and when you think you can explore it and understand it, it just vanishes. Why god why?. Why science at all, I would have been more happy with a fossil brush in my hand digging out Sreekirshnapithacus in the lower Himalayas or teaching literature to students and pretend that Shakespeare is "the dude" in the world.

You know whats more irritating than studying electronics, its being surrounded by peers who go gaga over it and making you feel like you have just appeared from the stone age( Actually stone age would have been much better, no electronics, no power, and i would have some 5 or 6 wives clad in leopard skin...hmmmm). A day before the exam when I am usually contemplating whether to study or not, the guys would be talking in language which would be more closer to Mordor tongue than English. A small snippet

Guy 1: In the MOS if the Vcc gets sinked here and Saturation current reaches zero, the threshold voltage will be crossed to let the current pass through the gate.

Guy 2: I thought the threshold voltage will not be passed and what about the parasitic capacitance.

Me : ( turning my head from left to right and figure out which one of the gates are they talking about and what parasite, Ebola kya )

I have almost exhausted my electronics vocab here. Have to be more careful so has to sustain it over the length of the post. Sigh !!.These are the sample people who don't find humour in a course named EDIC ( read E-DIC ).

If attending tuts at eight o clock during a freezing cold winter morning was a pain, wait till you sit for the examinations. I would generally gauge the toughness level of the paper by observing some of my fellow wingies who have the same passion for electronics like me. If they are in the same state of blinkingness, then I smile and return to my dreams and if they are scribbling something on the paper, then it means that the paper is very easy and I am most probably the candidate for E grade. If you thought you can enter into those chips and find females like Trinity or Monica Belluchi floating along with one of those zillions of zeroes and ones, you aren't allowed to do that either. And the worst part is to stare at all the diagrams in the examination paper. They are something like this, draw some small parallel lines judiciously across the page, then try drawing some straight lines, then try connecting these parallel lines and straight lines with more straight lines at 90 degree angle and then start writing letters like Vcc, P , N , S, D, C, I and others such, randomly across the page - pretty confusing isn't it. Don't worry you are absolutely on the right track.

flashback

the year was 2000, I am sitting at my desk in my house with this application from BITS and thinking of coming up with this priority of courses I would like to do.

me: I am going to put mechanical as my first choice

mother: Why don't u go for electronics like koushik ( my cousin )

me: no ma, i don't think I will like electronics.

mother: It is supposed to be the best courses in BITS

me: ok what about mechatronics

mother : Guys get good jobs with electronics, with mechanical u will working in a workshop

me :ok electronics it is then !!

Not a single day as gone by without me repenting that decision, not a single day without cursing my cousin, not single day without kicking my fat ass for getting lured into the trap.

The two most frequent words you will hear if you are a electronics student are - analog and digital. But when you start asking whats the difference between the two, mostly people start their response with something like this "Actually you know the digital signal is.....blah...blah". At that point you kinda get the feeling that guy's answer will be like the one I gave to your eight standard cousin when he asked you the same question or the one I gave to a girl who asked me this question to save my face.

When I joined my first company ( default = software ) I had to explain to the people there that I sucked in programming since I was from an electronics background.( I kicked myself for saying that because the company had an electronics dept and I was afraid they would transfer me there - think Srivats think!!). But the moment I shoot that phrase, they said that I should be very strong in electronics since it was my "core" subject and all that and my response was exactly like this

"Yeah...no...neways...could be....pretty much....boohha...yeah bee...!!!

Its been almost two years now and I cant remember much apart from ohm's law and that too because my friend told me a very funny way to remember the stuff.

V = Iyer ( read IR )

And I avoid tronics as much as Gandhi avoided bacardi. On a more serious note, its not fair to ask students to make a choice before college about what they want to do. Most of the people don't know jack shit about mechanical or electronics in their 12th and just seem to follow the trend.

Me - Santosh Shivan

2005-06-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

the satosh shivan touch, originally uploaded by srivats.

These are some of the photographs which i took at the chariot ( ther ) festival at Kapaleeshwarar temple in Maylapore, Chennai. I am not a deeply religious person, but I like to attend these festivals as it oozes an old world charm and for the fact that i grew up at mylapore

Anniyan - not a total stranger

2005-06-20T03:45:00.000-07:00

I thought I should never do a movie review on my blog, but Anniyan seem to need a review because of all the hype and expectations which seem to run along with a movie. There should be somebody who should put things in perspective here.

It was 7:30 on a Sunday morning in Satyam cinemas in Chennai. I lazily wade along to the theatre in shorts to watch Shankar's magnum opus Anniyan. I was excited as hell, the movie had all the hype -first there was Shankar, then there was Vikram, then there was this 30+ crores. I was more than surprised to see the theatre so full at 7:15 in the morning. These are the same people who on a usual Sunday morning give their moms a hard time making them get up from the bed.

oh my god another shankar film, and for gods sake its 7:30 in the morning. What kinda timing is it and its going to be another of these high budget films with gaudy sets and good production values. Should I have to go?,. I don't know why he has to drag me to a movie this early in the morning, when all I want is to sleep for another good three hours

The movie was real Shankar stuff, great production values, rich, entertaining. Picturization of the songs were good, making the songs all the more appealing. The tulip gardens of Amstredam were amazing ane so was the new KL airport for the "nokia" song. The movie was almost three hours long, but the racy script and screenplay made it look like a two hour movie. Vivek is back with the bang. Some vintage vivek after a long time

its typical Shankar stuff, moving around singing in foreign location and making those average movie goers go "Awhhh". No new story, no new stuff, just the same old boring yuckkk. But I liked Vivek too, so am not complaining.

Vikran(Ambi) is this iyengar lawyer who epitomises a good citizen. He always does everything by the book and wants people around him to do the same. For the same very reason why Sada( Nandini) the neighborhood iyengar girl rejects him downright. The place were he writes a love letter to her is totally hilarious.

its the same old story, good hero..but a little stupid and straight...and heroine doesn't like that....and the Brahmin lingo gets totally irritating in a while

Vikram is unable to do anything about the wrong doings in the society, so comes Anniyan(Vikram) who kills all the people who Vikram can't in a very innovative way. Prakash Raj comes along as the inspector who investigates the series of killing and Vivek as his assistant. Remo( Vikram) - the ramp walk model is another character who comes in to conquer Sadha's hearth with all the style and irritating accent.

Remo -Seriously, what kind a name is that to a person. Its a character Shankar could have done without. His "baby","Comeon man" accent is downright irritating and the only reason for him being here is for the two songs.

Things keep going and its found that Ambi is suffering from MPD( Multiple personality disorder) and Anniyan and Remo are his other personalities. In between Anniyan calls for this public meeting where he gives this big lecture on why India is still the poorest of countries and what can be done to prevent it.

What a sup rise -MPD. Nasser who comes as the psychiatrist is wasted totally and explanations given are very rustic. As in any Shankar movie there is flashback on why Ambi suffers from MPD...sister dies...due to lack of social responsibility of many people..blah ..blah..blah

Vikram does a commendable job. The time when he changes from one personality to another in split second while questioned by Prakash Raj is too good. Sadha, while I can write another post on her. Yummy!. Vivek is too good. Background score is decent. Dialogues by Sujatha are very trendy and current. Picturisation of the songs are done perfectly and Sabu Cyril done a beautiful job with art direction

Dont know what he sees in Sadha, she doesnt have any role as such. She comes in all the six songs and then disappears. Could have utilised Prakash Raj and Nasser a lot more. The way in which "randa ka" song was shot was amazing, they have painted a whole village for the song. But the other songs are only ok

The movie is more than worth to be watched once. Good ROI on your money.

U can watch it once....but not at 7:30 in the morning please

For all that its worth

2005-06-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

Parent tagger : Mystic Man

Total books I own

Around 50 + near infinite books which I have lent and not got back - near infinite books which I have been lent and not returned back

Last book I bought

The MotorCycle Diaries
by
Guevera and Co.

The last book I read

Armies of Hanuman
by
Ashok K Banker

Currently Reading

Dirk Gentleys Holistic Detective Agency
by
Douglas Adams ( E-book)

Books that have moved me and made me what i am

Freedom at Midnight
by
Larry Collins and Dominique Lappiere ( most of their other books - O Jeruslem, Is Paris Burning, Or I will dress you in mourning)

Mainly because, the authors have put factual writing and investigative reporting together and the result is too good.

God of all small things
by
Arundhati Roy

Dont know why I like this book so much. May be because i read iit n the car park of New Delhi airport for 6 hours in the night with really nothing much to do. The narration stuck a chord with me.

Swami and friends
by
R K N

Told the world that good books are not made by good( or rather bombastic) English, but by the power to tell a story like only a genius can.

Famous Five
by
Enid Blyton

This was my first book and this is what got me hooked on to books, an habit I am so grateful for.

Lost World
by
Michael Chricton

This book was more like reading a science text book with characters and dinosours in between. Very informative and got me hooked to evolution, which like many of my other interests dint live on the see the light of the next day.

The Moon is down
by
John Steinbeck

Gave me new insights into occupation during wars and silent ressistence.

Books that have let me down and have made me what I am

All the so called classics

Ex.
Catcher in the Rye ( too much complaining)
Catch 22( too much satire)
Hundred Years of Solitude( to much blah )

Let me break the chain

Travelogue

2005-06-13T03:22:00.000-07:00

As irony would have it I had to attend two marriages on consecutive days last week. One in Trichy and one in KovilPatti. Since I have vowed that I am not going to comment on marriages in general, I am going to talk about how pleasant an experience it was to travel in Tamil Nadu Bus service. Hmm... what a delightful experience it was. Close to 16 hours of travel on its comfy cushion recliner seats, perfumed seat-mate who doesn't smoke a bedi every 15 minutes, and window which was aerodynamically designed to let in copious amount of air and an award winning Tamil film played at lowest volume possible.

It was one 0 clock in the night, I was three pegs down and was wadding into the bus-stand in Trichy hoping that the weird timing would get me an empty bus and event less journey. Shake the head, clear the eyes, more shake the head - bus-stand was full, as in really-full. Soberness returned to me before I could say Madurai. With a heavy heart I walk to the "ENQUIRY" counter and was pretty surprised to see it manned by two people at this time of the night.

'Boss, KovilPatti ku any bus from here.'

'No, Brether'.

'Then how do I go'.

'You have to go to Madurai and then go to KovilPatti Brether'.

'Ok, Boss'.

Destination Madurai. I was informed that there are busses to Madurai every half an hour. Extremely happy about the improvement in public transport I digged further to as if there are any deluxe busses available. Cold stares Cold stares, time to exit. So with lots of hope I got on to this point 2 point bus from trichy to madurai. With an obsession for window seats, I bulldozed my way through couple of old people. Mission window-seat accomplished. Take out novel, plug in i-Pod, pray no one sits near you. Just when I was listening through "smoke on the water", I heard some high squeaking Tamil voice come through the headphones. For a minute there I thought my pod was picking up some extraterrestrial noise. With millions of dollars flashing through my heart, I lifted my head to realise that not only was the bus point to point, but it also had the extra facility of a DVD and a TV. Even the highest volume my i-pod could offer couldn't negate the noise which a couple of crying-screamy( a la Uncle Scrooch in Hindi) characters in the movie were making.

A old man came and sat near me, he was drunk, he smoked bedi and he was dirty. It was like god ripping my worst night mare and staging a play in front of me. Soon I decided that the best possible way to spend time on this bus is to sleep.

"Houston this is NSS Madurai, all systems up and running. I am going to catch some sleep".Pamela is running towards me, Shetty sisters...good good..blinking lights....beach on galaxy p2ptricymadurai.....coconut rum....dancing on the beach....lights blinking faster....sirens smoking....I can smell smoke inside the spacecraft, malabar beedi smell. "Mayday Mayday, houston we have a problem here.

"Madurai I cant here you"

"Mayday, mayday..Houston...we have territory breach, alien head smashing against spacecraft. Smoke systems not up"

"Madurai....we seem to not able hear your communication, repeat."

Big head smashing, smoke into nose of shuttle , I am suffocating, chock chock"

I woke with a start to see my dear seat-mate was blowing a load of beedi smoke on my face while resting his head on my shoulder. I jerked my shoulders up and down a couople of times, which made him shift his shoulder to the passenger on the other side of him. Bus stopped at some village. But wait I thought it was point 2 point. It took me sometime to realise that what they meant was one point on the road to next point on the road. Again to sleep. Madurai came, time was 3:45.

To add to all the confusion, I found out that there was two KovilPattis near Madurai. On asked about which one of those that I wished to reach, the only answer I could give was -" the one near Madurai". Suddenly the name "VirudhuNagar" popped into my head. After some heavy discussions and direction pointing I was asked to board a particular bus, which will drop me to KoviPatti. It was like an exact replica of the other bus, sans TV. Actually had second thoughts about getting on this bus, since it was not a direct bus to the destination there was more than a fair chance that I will sleep while KovilPatti drives by. One word of caution, if you are traveling in one of these busses please don't wear a shorts or if you are wearing one, get yourselves a kneepad. Because in most of these busses, the seat in front of you starts before your seat actually ends. It made me wonder whether the hobbits designed these buses. Hobbits or no-Hobits, the front seat scrapped a hell a lot of skin out of my knee. I got to sleep a on and off on this journey, waking every now and then to ask the conductor whether we have reached Kovilpatti or not, after some two or three enquiries the conductor promised me that he will wake me up when it comes. Another dream, this time without the smoke and the alien heads. Thank god for that.

KovilPatti came. I attended the marriage. Then another bus journey back to Madurai, this time I dint even have to undergo the pain of sitting. I traveled the whole journey standing on the foot-board, which was kind of cool in a way. We returned to Chennai on a Volvo. You cant even imagine what it is to travel in a comfy push-back seat, with AC running full blast and when there is no need to jerk your shoulders up and down to ward of old-smoking-sleeping man's head. Pure pleasure. There goes all my dreams of a back-packing Lonely-Planet kinda tour across India.

Vango Vango

2005-06-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

I thought I should do some brahmin digging again, not that I am against any of them. (being one myself). But they make up for a very interesting lot, lot of anecdotes, lots of rituals, lots and lots of misplaced notions.

Post is result of serious research and observation while attending n(n+1)/2 (where n tends to infinity), south Indian brahmin marriages.

A brahmin marriage is a three day affair, yes you heard me right. In most other cultures there would be a semblance of a baby growing by that time. A full three days filled with eating, drinking filter coffee, makings gossips, paving way to more such marriages and well more eating. You are invariably welcomed into the marriage hall with a huge board outside pronouncing Srinivasan Parthasarthy weds Shwetha and most of the time the name of the guy extends up to three lines of the board to fit the whole name into it. Keep hearing rumours that the present generation are naming their sons Srini, Padhu, Nara or Sri so that the names fit into the board without much trouble. When it comes to marriage, brahmins would be the most pro-active people on earth.

First function is inviting the groom inside the marriage hall. When I am saying groom I am saying a KPN bus loads of relatives with huge suitcases and airbags, which will make a Amristar-London Air-India cargo handler dizzy. Picture this with a "veshti" laden bride's father rushing to the entrance uttering "vango" (welcome) "vango" and "how was the journey". The journey mentioned here is a 2 km trip from mylapore to t.nagar. It would take thrice that time to load and unload the luggage however. Oops I almost forgot to mention three characters who would accompany most of the scenes in this marriage. The photographer, Cameraman and the Nadaswara vidhwan. (Nadaswaram is a south Indian instrument which accompanies every function. The instrument was designed pretty loud keeping in mind lack of microphones and amplifiers in the past. Queen Elizabeth can comfortably hear it in Windsor Castle if Nadaswaram is played in Royal Albert Hall....don't tell me Albert hall is inside the Windsor Castle, because I totally don't know). Every important happening in the marriage warrants a blaring loud music from the Nadaswaram, its a way of telling people to turn their attention away from gossiping to the actual ceremony which is happening. The welcoming of the groom is one such happening.

After the groom is welcomed in with enough pomp and is settled in the Ashee ( read AC ) room, its time for distributing coffee. Its not a joke when people say the measure of a successful brahmin marriage is a measure of the viscosity and composition of dikashan, milk and water in the coffee thats being served.

me to grandma: "How did the marriage you attended yesterday go?"

grandma : "You cant imaging how bad the coffee was".

Hello! I actually forgot the question I asked.

You can hear Mr VaradaRajan say "You know how bad the coffee in KumaraSamy's daughters marriage was, it was awful. It seems that they bought the coffee powder from Coffee day instead of Narasus". Little does Mr VaradaRajan know that his daughter is drinking Cafe Mocha in Coffee day with his would be son-in-law.

Janvasam beckons. A procession of the bride and the groom to the local temple to get the blessing of the god and jam all the roads in the neighborhood and to make raucous music and wake unsuspecting early to sleep children like me. But this time around the music is not by a Nadaswaram but by a English eshtyle band, turning out old Tamil hits. Mode of transportation is an convertible car decorated with flowers all over. If you are thinking in the likes of Porsche carrera or a even a Ford Mustang, rub your eyes hard. Its one of those old Indian cars with their tops ripped off, which give about 0.7Km for a litre of petrol. Always wondered whether these processions are painfully slow because these cars can churn out only sub one km/hr speeds. Back to specifics, after returning to the hall a sumptuous meal is served. The collective after the meal burps would easily supply gas to a small village.

(We should give the North Indians credit for the funniest marriage procession though, the grooms are hoisted up a horse. Adding to the misery is a turban with flowers hanging over the face, reducing visibility to just the ear of the horse.)

Day 2 is the big day, the marriage day. Culmination of 27 years of journey for the groom. The end of the IIT/BITS/ANNA Univ -> MS/IIM -> job in some falthu faultee company in US / Management consultant in India journey. For the bride its the end of 23 years of searching the perfect groom journey. Morning starts with the usual doss of coffee and tiffin. Then comes a function which can only be described as god's entry to Ripley's believe it or not. Kasi Yatrai ( Journey to Kasi), is a function where the groom acts angry and decides to go to Kasi and the father-in-law tries to cajole him back to marry away his daughter. May be the whole drama was ingenuously created to make dowry legitimate. Complete with a veshti, umbrella and walking stick, the costume of the groom is downright funny. There is one part in the function where the uncles of the bride and groom lift them up so that they can exchange a garland. Pray, my uncle should either be an Austrian Governor of California or semi-clad man in Afghanistan chasing Russians.

The marriage is pretty unfair for the guys, you have to be shirtless for most of the cermony.No wonder you can see so many of these belly ponching 27 years in my local gym. Girls appear in a saree which are wrapped around then so many times, Duchadhanan would have required two breaks before pulling the whole stuff off. For actual marriage the bride sits on the father's lap , with the groom tying the knot. Amid all the tears and laughs the father emits you can actually hear him curse his wife for pouring so much ghee into the girl's rasam sadham. Another round of gluttonous excertion follows.

What follows the marriage ceremony is a reception hosted by the couple. Though the concept was borrowed from the British, the reception like many other things have gone through a very distinct brahmin metamorphosis. It starts with the bride and groom standing on a dias/stage all decked for the occasion. Its seriously stupefies me how the groom manages to survive in a blazer under the super heating effect of the video-lights, that too in a city like Madras. Sweaty!!. The bride usually arrives in another heavy silk saree. Adding to the misery of the already suffocating couple is the heavy flower garland and pain of coming out with around thousand fake smiles. People generally wait in a long queue to hand over the presents to the couple, and for their one moment of glory on stage. Entertainment is provided by either of the two sources - very loud light music band or a very boring carnatic recital. If its the former the sound is so loud that people have to shout over that make themselves being heard, adding to the general noise. If its the latter the happenings are pretty mellow with just a few oldies nodding their heads and shaking their hands in the first few rows.

There ends the brahmin marriage ( actually there is another function the next day, but lets say its not very important).Talking about serious things, most of the brahmin marriages now a days are very short and crisp. And in most of the marriages the concept of dowry has almost vanished, which is a very good thing. No cylinder or stove bursts I suppose.

Cliche 26

2005-05-27T23:07:00.000-07:00

I know I am leading myself into a big trap, but any ways I am going to continue writing this post. The most often word I hear nowadays is "cliche". "Its very cliched man". "What a Cliche!". So I thought i would discuss what this word means, and the role it plays in socio setup of the present society. Oxford dictionary defines the word......on afterthought since its a very cliched way of starting things I am just going to leave the link for meaning of the word here. Having accomplished my fist part let me get into the role it plays in development of adolescent attitudes these days.

When this cliche concept started out everything that was old way of doing things were considered cliched. A Bank job was cliched. Vada Pav was cliched. So on and so forth. People thought it was kind of cool not to be cliched. BCom was cliched engineering was cool. Kurta was old and cliched, Denim came of age. BellBottoms gave way to tight fits and Big collared shirts gave way to round collared t-shirts. Amazingly all this phenomena affects people only in the age group of 16-30. I am not saying it doesn't affect older one, it does affect the old females. Natural gray hair was dyed. It was considered cliched to look old (by the old). Simple cotton sarees gave way to gaudy silk ones. Amazingly through all these habits like the way we eat or shit dint change much metamorphosis. I wonder why.

Slowly things changed, the wheel of time spun. People started considering trying not being cliched as cliched. All the things which were considered old were back into vogue. Thick framed glasses ( thanks to P.Zinta of Kal ho na ho ), bell bottoms became boot cuts. And for the old, suddenly it was fashionable to leave your hair gray. Cotton sarees came back with force. Only now they cost as much as silk ones do. Guys started wearing Kurtas, girls were back to big earings and gaudy skirts. Engineering has become cliched, media communication is the in thing. And thus the cliche was back in its vicious circle.

What I am wondering here is change in peoples attitudes are driven by people trying not to be cliched. Or not being cliched arises from the fact that attitudes and styles of people are changing too fast. Cliche - Cliche of trying not being cliched ( which is also a cliche ) - trying to be cliched just because people around u are cliched . I am kind a loosing track here. Why so much complication. Cant people be what they actually are - but wait isn't that the "Biggest Cliche of all".

Life is random

2005-05-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

Thanks to A~ I got an ipod shuffle for myself. Between the time I got it ( ie Thursday ) and now and minus the time I spend in my bathroom its been plugged to my ear. While I drive,jog ( brisk walk, panting scuffle oh! whatever ), eat its been my constant companion for three event full days. My servant thought it was a hearing aid, the liftman in my office thought it was a FM player, the guy at Globus thought it was a mobile. Each time I had to patiently explain to them the fundas of MP3 and get them onboard to the fact that it plays music. The worst part is sometime you involuntarily sing out the song that is played and most of the time you sing horribly. Isn't it surprising that when you cant hear yourself sing, you just cannot sing as good as the time when you can hear yourself sing.

Suddenly last night I realised that if I keep listening to it like this I would soon loose interest in it and what a waste of investment that it would be. So I have rationed the use of my ipod, only during morning jogs/walks and while driving. 'Life is Random' goes the i-pod shuffle ad and random usage it is from now.

Appearences are deceptive

It was my friends birthday and I decided to get him some book, old books. So I headed of to this place near Mylapore in Chennai where there is this huge road side shop which has this huge collection of old books. When I say huge, I am saying piles of books 10 to 12 feet high. This time when i went around, I found it difficult to locate the shop. It was shrunk down by a factor of more than ten. Amid all these piles of books there sat the old black man with a startling white beard. He recognised me instantly and smiled at me. His knowledge of books is amazing. He has no formal education whatsoever. But he has got an amazing knowledge of books written authors like Marque, Steinbeck, Sallinger etc etc. More astonishing is the fact that he could locate all these books out of the huge pile.

This time around he was less of his usual cheerful self. He told me that the corporation came one day and took all his book collection away. To add to the misery some local assoles, stole auto loads of books in the pretext of helping the poor old man. All for earning from giving those priceless collection for what it is worth in weight. So he told me that he stored his more worthy books in his house. I gave him a lift to his house, and he managed to get all the books I needed. I got some six books for which I payed him some 250 bucks, a little overprices for old books but what the heck, its for a robbed old man any ways. So I dropped him back at his daughters place. On my way back I thought if I ever got to compile list of "Who's who" for Chennai, I should include him into that. But wait, I don't know his name. May be I will name him "Luz Church book man".

My first Letter

2005-05-16T00:38:00.000-07:00

Dear India,

Here I am sitting in this very comfy air conditioned room trying to write about my feelings for you. I am not even sure if I have any. I am not sure of most of the things when it concerns the relationship we both share. Its not one of love or hate. I just don't know. I have spent twenty two comfortable years under your wraps, comfortable not because you provide any, because I was lucky to be born in a well to do family. Comfortable because I had the money to buy everything I needed. Comfortable because I don't care whats going on around me.

Film Anbe Shivam

Madhavan : What kind of country is it, you don't even get comfort even when you money.

Kamal : As long as there are individuals who think that they can get anything with money. This will be India for you.

I am more like the Madhavan character, well-to-do, city bred, living inside the shell of comfort. I am not even sure I know anything about you. Still I am essentially Indian. In color, ways and feelings.

When some one said 25 % of the GDP is contribute to agriculture, but 70 % of the population depends on agriculture for their living. I knew something was wrong. But I dint care to do anything about it. I have never even gone to a true village or seen those brown sweat glistening backs which bend down to harvest the very rice I eat. The rice which I take for granted. I wouldn't even know how much a Kg of it would cost. Why should I?. You know sometimes I tell my father that I would love to settle down in a village. Deep inside me i know that I wouldn't last in one for more than a week. I am too corrupted by city life. I am city bred, living in a world of levis, nikes and ray-bans. Khadhi, goat-milk and oat meals doesn't ring a bell with me. I love the city and I hate it for the same reasons.

My heart would be beat fast with happiness to see on TV that how kids in one remote village school are using computer. They have stopped beating fast now. I have realised that for every village they show on TV there are thousand other which don't even have water, electricity or basic access to health care. Shining - is a word they have never heard of in these places.

When I see those fools who swindle crores of rupees of money from schemes which are supposed to reach poor people. My blood boils. But it stops boiling the next minute I change the channel from NDTV to Star movies. Ho Kingdom of heaven is doing good business. When I hear about some soldier who jumped in front of his fellow soldier. Loosing his life and Saving in friends. Goose bumps and a chocking of heart. But like the boiling blood it too goes away in a fraction of the second. Change to MTV, Norah Jones won a load of Grammies. Damn the Indian Connection.

Twenty two years ( twenty three shortly) years and I have failed to understand you. A confused youth in a equally confusing time. One billion brothers and sisters yet a lone stranger. I want to discover the thread of feelings that unite us. But I am clueless from where to start or what to do. When I sit in one of those coffee places looking at all the people around me, I am often reminded of a conversation.

Venue : BITS-Pilani, New Wing facing Insti Upstairs, Ram Bhavan
Time : Around 3 o clock in the nite.

My Friend : "Imagine this when humans started out with civilized living, everyone would have started out with equal amount of wealth right. But some where down the line, one assole took some money from another dumb wit and this guy got richer than the other. As things progressed - the rich and poor came into being. Shouldn't we rich people start giving things back to the poor and restoring the order back."

His Friend : "Some how, that makes sense !".

Me: Bull Shit.!

Doesn't seem a lot of bull shit to me now. Guilty as hell.I used to crib about you a lot, bad roads, bad infrastructure, inability to win medals in Olympics etc etc. But I have stopped them now. I realised I don't have right to crib about something for which I am doing nothing. And it doesn't even matter if I do. One voice get drowned in the 10 crore shouts for hunger.

Its probably the only letter I have written in life and the feeling of writing one is great. I even don't know why wrote you the letter. It has no specific purpose like me, I just felt like writing and I wrote one. Have to go now. Just stay healthy and fine. For your health is health of mine and one billion of fellow people.

Yours lovingly

Another burden on your back

Srivats.

Sriphy's Law

2005-05-11T22:07:00.000-07:00

I hope one day they turn out to be as famous as Murphy's Law

Theorem one : Bad boss will result in no work

Proof:

job + bad boss = bullshit --------------- (1)

job - work = great --------------- (2)

Subtracting (1) - (2)

bad boss + work = bullshit - great

Since bullshit = great

bad boss + work = zero

bad boss = - work

This effectively proves that a bad boss leads to negative work.

Theorem two : Motivation at work place is bliss

Proof:

Free food + good salary = motivation ------- (1)

Bad fool + bad chicks = demotivation ------- (2)

good chicks + good food = bliss ------- (3)

Since motivation = - demotivation

Adding (1) and (2)

free food + good salary = - ( bad food + bad chicks )

Since bad food = - good food

bad chicks = - good chicks

free food + good salary = - ( - good food - good chicks )

Free food + good salary = good food + good chicks

From equation (1) and (2)

Motivation = bliss

Theorem three: Messenger at work place is always 2 good

Proof:

Messenger * work place = good communication ------- (1)

employee + communication = good employee

communication = good employee - employee

= good

messenger * work place = good good

Substituting * with @

messenger @ work place = (good )^2

PS : Don't be surprised if these are taken as case studies in Harvard thirty years down the line.

Whats the deal with

2005-05-10T03:56:00.000-07:00

Beauty being skin deep. What do you want a adorable pancreas (Not mine).

Citezen Kane being a classic film, I watched the movie and it sucked big time.

Amir Khan being a perfectionist. Who will not be if you give them three years to take a movie.

Shakthi Kapoor being victimised. If what was shown on the TV was true, then so should be the other names(Aishwarya Rai, Subash Ghai, Rani Mukherjee)which he mentioned

Sonia Gandhi making the ultimate sacrifice by giving up Prime-Minister ship

Heralding Ambedhkar as a national hero. He just wrote the constitution and most of which were copied from other constitutions.

All the Sachin bashing. He is still ( and will be) the best batsmen in the world.

Formula One coming to Hyderabad, racing is as alien to hyd as dum briyani is to Chennai

All the controversies regarding man landing on the moon. Give the yankees some credit, they arent that dumb.

my bush being better than America's. I already know that

Jobless - Part II

2005-05-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

Day 2

Same office, same tension in the air, same hushed voices and same BUZZ on the YM.

MR X:Boss 1 came from US yesterday night, he is inside with Boss 2 discussing somethig, they are in there for about half an hour now.

ME: I think they are discussing whom to check out, right now my name is being written on some list.

MR X: Our names

ME: Lay-off is the secret of my bull-shitting life.

Bad humour always comes out at bad times like these. The one that make you go like this "Hmm." rather than "HA ha a"."Squeak",all heads turned to the boss' door. Two people came out laughing. What could possibily make them laugh in a moment like this. There are 20 guys sitting with their balls in their mouth. The girls were equally nervous, but the _expression doesnt suit them well.

Nothing concrete happens for another two hours. Its better to know that you are out rather than having the cat on the wall feeling. Ten or fifteen cats on a cracked up wall. Monotony of work on one side and freedom of vettiness on the other. Both looked alluring. But the freedome to jump werent ours.

Lunch came and went, but the food actually tasted good today. Signs of things seriously going bad.Another meeting, anoher reviewof the bad financial situation, a reassurance tat they are not going to sac anyone ( 45 phews escaping 30 mouths, some people let out 2). But stuff like we have to work really hard and should never expect a bonus or raise in salary in the near future were pointed out.

Good heavens, I will still have a job tomorrow. Its a beautiful feeling. Work was stopped to make the feeling sink in.

ME: Dei

MR X: Abha da!

ME: No salary raise a !

MR X: Be happy that you would be getting a salary at least

ME: True, so true

Tea/coffee/cig break came. Again groupism was dissolved to discuss todays proceedings. Mini parliment of sorts. Phraces like "I thought i would get fired", "that is the best way to escape this company", "who would stay in a company like this". Humas the biggest hypocrats i tell you.

Afterword:

Me and MR X and Z still continue to work for the company.

Three people quit the company due to the apparent instability.

The company got some new clients

Junta got salary raise.

Jobless

2005-05-05T04:31:00.000-07:00

This is a recollection of an episode which happened in the recent past. Though now the tides have turned and the moments are much more happier, I thought I would share these moments and feelings people go through when they are put in situations like this.

Day 1

I enter the office at 9 o clock in the morning and you know there is something wrong. The air was filled with murmuring noises instead of the usual chaos. People where in their seats and talking in hushed voices with their neighbors. Since its a very small company information travels fast. Very fast.

I make myself comfortable in my chair and sign into my messenger. Bingo

MR X: BUZZ

MR X is a long term friend of mine who helped me join the company. He is some 4 months senior to me in the company

ME: Enna da! ( What da )

MR X: Dei, I think they are going to lay of at least 10 to 15 people from Chennai da.

ME: Shit !! Shit !!

ME: Who told you da

MR X: Junta are talking, evidently some one told Y in US. ( Y is one of those guys who had gone to US to work onsite )

ME: So basically I am chucked out.

Since i was just two months old in the company, I assumed correctly that I would be chucked out. It was such a rude shock. One day you have a job and the next day you don't. Though the company had lost of couple of its major clients, we never expected lay-off.

MR X: Dei, why you da. I think they will chuck me.

ME: What bullshit!, I joined four months after you and I think that both of us will get chucked.

Happiness!, someone will be with me. Its strange that there is little happiness when there is someone who is going to go through the same shit that we are.

Meanwhile i opened a window to chat with Z who would definitely know about the lay-off. He is the grapevine creator ,distributor of our company.

ME: Is it true

Z: Don't know da

ME: Dei !

Z: I think thats why he is coming from US tomorrow. They haven't decided on the 10 yet.

ME: You needn't worry da.

Z: Thats true.

MR Z dint even try to convince me that I may not be chucked. Truth hit me hard. By this time our boss had come to office. Every pair of eyes turned to his hands, searching for the inevitable pink slips with ten of the 30 fateful names written on them. Damn !

A meeting was called. Details of difficult times ahead for the company along with financial problems where stressed. Lay-off was confirmed. Thirty heavy sighs followed. People frantically went to their places. Naukri.com was launched, old resumes where dug, calls to friends were made. I just sat stupefied.

Break time came, the usual groupism was dissolved. The whole company minus the boss assembled outside the company. Phrases like "Its easy to get jobs now" and "Economy is doing good" and "boss is an ass" and "oracle too is laying off" were heard. Mouths spoke encouraging words, the faces showed them off.

End of day: People from US had signed on YM, information and gossip were exchanged, the hadn't received there salary yet. Lay-off was becoming more of a reality each minute. 29 distressed hearts went home to a sleepless night without knowing what tomorrow as going to throw at them.

Day 2 in next blog.

PS: The reason for not disclosing the characters is a resent firing of a google employee for chronicling in too detail his stay at Googleplex.

The Myth

2005-05-03T05:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, I am not talking about the Jakie Chan and Mallika Sherawat starrer. I am talking about Aishwarya Rai. I got this link from my friend which had all the videos of show which she had appeared in prime time American television. I am taking big time TV shows, David Letterman, ABC Night time and CBS 60 minutes and oprah. Collectively the above programs would reach every person in America from Honolulu and Anchorage.

And usually in all these talk shows, they have this intro clip of the person who is being interviewed. Here are some absurd facts that are being hyperboled about BollyWood and Aishwarya Rai in particular.

1. That Aishwarya is the reigning queen of Indian Cinema. She is the most successful actress in world cinema today. ( Don't know where Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts stand ).

2. That Bollywood is watched by around 5 billion people around the world, which is around a billion more than the viewership of Hollywood. ( counting the 1 billion in India and some .2 billion in Pakistan, I don't know how to account for the remaining 3.8 billion ).

3. That she charges around some 15 million dollars a film, which amounts to 64.5crores per film. The whole budget of Devdas was around 50 odd crores.

4. That Bollywood makes more films than Hollywood. The quality of the film is neglected here. I am not saying that Hollywood productions are all good (most of them are crap), but they at least have good production values.

5. She is international face of Coke-Cola.( Seriously doubt that ).

Some standards reply she gave during all these above interviews. I dont know whether the anchors are so dumb to repeat the same set of questions or is Aishwarya Rai so un-imaginative not to rephrase the sentences at least.

Anchor: I heard there is no kissing in Bollywood movies. Every time there is a tender moment, instead of kissing you seem to burst out into songs. Is kissing taboo in India?

Ash ( which according to anchor, is how she is fondly called ) : "In India, kissing is more of a private outpouring of emotion. You don't see people kissing around street-corners. I am not saying that Indians don't have healthy love life, which they have. After all its the land of KamaSutra. Its just the whole cycle of life following art and back".

Anchor : Would you be comfortable doing kissing scenes when you are doing some movies over here?

Ash : Lets cross the bridge when you reach it ( this she said all the four shows )

In between all these copious amount of "how she is food freak" and "never cared to go to gym" is thrown in. She even went on record saying that "Taj Mahal is more beautiful than me". Makes you like Kareena Kapoor better now, doesn't it?

PS: Why this post you might ask, wont you bitch about you girlfriend when she ditches you.

Innocence

2005-05-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

If somebody props me the question "what is the single thing which i miss a lot in my shortly lived life - I think i would think for about 10 nanoseconds to say "My Innocence".

I would like to go back to the days when i used to play with girl next door, without thinking twice about what she thinks about me. I would want to go back to the days where i asked a guy why he was so black while others weren't. To the days where u don't think twice about what others think and do what i want to do without hesitation.

I can do all that stuff eve now, but that was the only way it was fun and will ever be.

Oh ! god how much i want it back! Hey ! NASA people, please make time travel possible and fast !

PS : Before u crib one more time, just think of thousands of people who will give anything to live your life for one day.

The history text book hoopla

2005-04-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

Why do history books get the grunt of all the controversies. Be it Mr. Murali Manohar Joshi trying to saffronise them or China and Japan pulling each other over who killed the most. Is it because they are the only documentaries of human action. The only place where humans as a race and a generation can go and introspect themselves. A place where they can look back at what mistakes the previous generations have done and come back and repeat the whole lot of mistakes all over again. I may be cynical, but yet true.

For all those hue and cry that China is making, I would like to know what China's history text book teach their children about Moa and the so called peasant revolution. I bet my whatever that all the people who died in the name of revolution and how China is in a state semi-opression are some of the facts that would have neatly omitted. And I sure bet that the revolution killed more than the Japanese during their conquest of Manchuria. What would the Chines text book say about Mao -"Moa is a great revolutionary and is our father of our nation. He bought us freedom from the oppression of landlords and imperialist. He is epitome of blah blah !. Crap I say!

Lets come to our own NCERT text books. We would all have a chapter on Russian revolution and till around some three years back i still thought that Lenin was the quintessential good guy which the textbooks had portrayed. Maybe thats because majority of the textbooks in India have been written before the fall of communism, before all the old soviet archives became public. Here is a letter which Lenin wrote to his comrades

"Comrades! ... Hang (hang without fail, so that people will see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers ... Do it in such a way that ... for hundreds of versts around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: 'They are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks' ...
Yours, Lenin."

Better than Stalin you may argue, but still a killer at heart.

History is always written by winners. Case in point, we know so much about the mughals before the biritish conquest but what happened to them after that. Because that part of history wasn't widely chronicled, Mughals became loosers then. Most of World War II stories that we know are written by American and English. We don't even know the German side of views. I am not justifying the holocaust. But a proper history is one which chronicles the both sides of the story - winners and losers. Unless that happens, history textbooks will remain a source of controversy.

Srivats

Just click it

2005-04-28T01:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you see a photograph in a magazine or paper and think what those characters in the photograph are thinking when the photo is been clicked. Most of time they are just useless images, but there are some when there is a story behind the photo. A story of survival , a story of love, a story of anger and a story of life. I have always been a keen appreciator of the photographic medium and i know what it takes to wait patiently for that one moment of animation which makes some photographs eternal. Its a pity that the Indian magazines have not yet developed the sense of a nice photo. A photo can tell so many things a word can't.

Some photographs which made news and history
If only looks could kill !

If only looks could kill !, originally uploaded by srivats.

Viet Conned

Viet Conned, originally uploaded by srivats.

Uncle Sam down down

Damn uncle sam!, originally uploaded by srivats.

Mode or Lalu ?

lalu only talks, originally uploaded by srivats.

Here are some pulitzer winning photographs

Scribbles of a different kind

2005-04-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

You know how when you are sitting in a class which you should not have come and you gape at the empty space in front of you and you just hit on some funny comments written on the desk which make you go splits. Probably everyone who has passed out of college would know. Some of them are very hilarious while some of them are downright dirty. Its a good place to find out all the latest college gossip of who is going out with whom and who wants to go out with whom. The desk in some way become the the Page 3 of college life. Its funny you know when somebody comes back to the wing and says that he found my name written on a desk, but the fun stops the moment he says that there was a girl's name written besides it and there was this usual ball point pen "heart pierced with an arrow" symbol sandwiched between them.

Here are some of those famous scribbles from my college which have gone on to become legends.

Room 2217
(written under a sketch of a coffin)
In sad memory of all the people who died here waiting for the bell to ring.(I managed to survive though)

On 1221 door

We came We saw We went.

Some desk in 3rd faculty

Person 1 writes: Jesus never fails
Person 2 writes under this: Ask him to do EEE ( thank god i did EI)

Don't remember where

Person 1 :We compscietes give you EEEites a byte in the back.
Person 2 :We EEEites give you the comp.

Near the physics Cubicles

They said that good things come in small packages,then whats the deal with Quantum Physics.

Its time to shed some

2005-04-26T04:41:00.000-07:00

"Weight", would have been better if I would have been able to complete it with tears. Its been a long time since i had cried you know. Dire warnings from my mom had made me take the path to gluttonous nihilism. I am following the General Motors diet which should reduce my weight by 5 kgs ( at least that is the hope ). I am into my second day now, a day of vegetables and an ever increasing feeling that i am turning into a cow.

With 3 liters of water everyday, my bladder is playing squeezeball with me and I am drawing weird glance s from the receptionist in my company for going into the loo so many times. I actually explained the reason and the stares have stopped for now. But my frequent trips to the loo have not.

Irrespective of whether i am going to reduce my weight are not, this process of dieting will surely increase my respect for food. Rice in particular. Its just amazing that the same rice which i used to hate so much seems like the elixir to all my worries on earth. Strange isn't it. One thing i have learned from this exercise is "you realise only when you miss". Sounds like a line from zen, doesnt it?

PS: here is the link to the diet program and here is a review on diets in general on msn

Stuff legends are made of

2005-04-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

main_rebel, originally uploaded by srivats.

Can you see that man standing in fron of that tank in the photo, no body knows his name nor his presnt whereabouts. But this man made into the Time top 100 people of the century for cherishing and upholding what makes human life liveble - the spirit of humanity.

Stigma of a brahmin social occasion !!

2005-04-21T06:02:00.000-07:00

I have to go to a marriage tomorrow or is it a gravapravesam ( house warming function ), i don't really remember. All i care to think is the presence of a whole hoard of relatives aged fifty and above, and this realisation brings a kind of sick feeling inside me. In spite of the heavenly smelling food and for a fact I can meet my cousins after a long time. I hope many of you have been in the situation before, but let me tell you what makes it a real pain in your ass if it is one of those brahmin functions.

1. You have to stand stupidly in front of all the elders and answer questions which you have told them already in numerous other occasion. ( actually similar functions like these ).

2. a) My grand mom introducing me to her girlfriends that I am from "Bits-Bilani " ( even after having told repeatedly that it is Pilani ) adding to my embarrassment and paving way to further questions about many obscure relations of theirs studying in Pilani.

b) How one of the my grand mom's girlfriend ( words can be deceptive - the whole gang is 60 and above ) tell my grand mom that she would alway be willing to marry her granddaughter to me. ( It might sound flattering - but believe me its not ).

3. Patiently explain to them why I changed companies and what my new company does ( I work in a start up, which few apart from the 30 people i work with would have heard off). Further get drilled about why i am not working in Infy or TCS or CTS, and the fact that how one of their nephews or grandchild has gone to US working for one of these companies

4. Why I dint app and go to US to do my MS. Since everybody from Pilani are expected to be roaming in times-square or the bay area rather than the by-lanes of Mylapore. Have to tell them that i was not and am not interested in technical stuff - only to be stared back with " is that a reason" kind of look.

5. Committing my worst blunder by saying that I would like to do my MBA sometime ( non committal ha ....!! ) later. This paves way to the whole " I am witting CAT next year" and " waiting to complete 2 years of work ex" thing. ( A blatant lie ).

6. Be given flashback of how industrious and studious my father was and how he is the pride of the family. ( A subtle indication that i have turned out to be looser ).

7. Being asked for advice from over-enthusiastic younger kids( the real studious types)about education, career and other things.

8. In between all these you are given a liberal dose of how i am 2 inches short of average height and 2 inches broad of normal girth is thrown in .

After enduring all these at last you get to the best part - ganging around with all the cousins and ogling or going to eat the delicious feast that awaits you. At the end when everybody is leaving you are given a solemn warning to remember the near infinite advices that were given to you during the day.

PS: Though the post may look like a shameless point by point listing of all my failure in my life, it is truth and nothing but the truth . ( where is the damn Bhagavadh Gita )

Srivats

HG2GF !!!

2005-04-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : The methods mentioned below have not been tested. There are high chances that they may back-fire.

Are you having problems of getting fired from your company ? Is your company not letting go of your valuable service. Here are 10 easy ways to get fired from the company.

1. Don't say anything about your plans of changing to anybody. Drop the bomb shell ( depends of who is leaving, when i last quit the company it was hardly a bullet shell )with a surprise. Doesn't give the management enough time to prepare arguments for u not leaving the company.

2. Don't be in your seat for the most of the day. ( If u are already the the types not always in place, don't come to your place at all) Especially when there is a release or something. Absent urselves on those days. Will surely infuriate your boss.

3. Forward a porn mail to the HR. This will surely get you fired. Add the hr's mail id in between the cc list. Makes it look accidental.

4. Read through the companies HR policies very well and find a loop hole. There is always one.

5. Go to your boss and said you are hired by your company's competitor. You get fired in 5 mins. Case in point: My friends told me that in oracle, if u say u are hired by SAP - in the next 5 mins u wont even have a email- account, leave alone the job.

6. Make a pass at a girl in office. Don't select the famous babes, go for a conservative girl. Those are the ones who go and complain.

7. Keep comparing the working standards of your company with that of other companies.

8. Strictly adhere to shabby clothes and unkempt hair and beard.

9. Come one hour after the starting time and one hour before the sun sets. If you are in the west coast, make it two.

10. Always give ur letter after u draw the salary for the previous month. Generally the best date to put your papers is the first of the month. That ways u would have drawn the previous months salary.

PS : Couple of interesting sites to get fired.

The one with the economics

2005-04-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

It all started out with me looking up an entry for "BigMac Index" in wikipedia. The search loop went to PPP ( purchasing power parity ) and it then sucked me into PCI ( per capita income ) and this boomeranged into a whole chain of thought.

The finance ministers of G7 countries meet yet again to discuss the amount of aid to be given to the third world countries and yet again they don't seem to have made any concrete decision on the timeframe or the amount to be dispersed. Why don't the rich countries like America and the European Union give of money to the poor countries. The logic of why they should give is pretty simple. But the economics part of it I am not so sure. One Tomahawk missile costs around a million American dollars, considering that a person in India can be fed well for a day with just 2 dollars ( Rs 87 ), u can feed around 5 lakh people a day ( India was taken has a example to make my math more easier, no offense to India. Doesn't mean people aren't dying of hunger in India, lot of them are). Isn't that staggering. And America fired around thousands of them during there search for Osama or their quest to find WMD ( Weapon's of Mass Destruction ), most of the time hitting inhabited hills or more often marriage ceremonies in far off Iraqi villages.

Take the case of India and Pakistan, they are into another of these weapons purchasing
spree were India's budget( for upgrading the arsenal) is around 65,000 crores and Pakistan's a 10,000. Most of these submarines and fighter jets are made in Vladivostok or Texas. Should two countries be in an artificially triggered arms race because workers in a factory line in Texas are getting laid off or Russia's only flourishing and money making industry is making arms. This, in two countries where thousands die daily due to lack of food or basic access to hygiene or water or etc etc.

But again do these rich countries have a financial obligation to give money to the poor. Not in a strict sense, but definetly a moral obligation. Considering the fact that majority of the European Union and America have been benefactors of imperialism. Look at the present day scenario - raw materials are being outsourced from Africa, brain and manpower from Asia and decisions are made in America and Europe. Imperialism in a more ugly form – independence in a non-economic way.

The developed countries have lot to gain by ensuring that people in the poor nations live well. There is a serious problem facing many western corporations from Ford to Sony, saturation of market i.e they are not able to push their products anymore into market. So increase in standard of living in the third world countries will open a huge market for the western world. A market of more than a 2.5 billion people. The plan is little selfish, but its a win-win situation for both. I would like all those men in suits and kimonos to take a pledge to make sure that not a single child in the world perishes from want of food - a commodity which seems too trivial to people who can afford it

The one where i plan a vacation

2005-04-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

I started out writing something about communism, but thought i don't know much about it apart from the fact that the concept to me sounds fundamentally flawed. I was discussing with some of my friends back at work about good places to visit, since its been a long time since i have been on a vacation. A real kind of vacation. When ever i bring out the concept of vacation back at home, the argument finally ends with a very curt statement - Isn't the four your vacation at college enough for you . So true, but yet so wrong.

There is a real problem with staying in India, there are too many places inside India to visit and so little time to do it. Its a little frustrating for a self proclaimed travel geek like me. Even if I take off once a month i would not able to replenish all the tourist destinations in India. But then my idea of a vacation is not the ones where people go around in a bus and take a photo in front of the Taj Mahal and come back home and show the pictures to their relatives, as if it is a proof to their adventurous spirit or to the fact that they can really afford to go to cool trips like that. When we visit a place, we should explore it on our own and get a feel of the local culture. The present day tourist want to got a place without dealing with the locals who live in the place. Not that i have done too many of these trips myself. But still.

And the irony is i want to see a lot of places outside India too. Paris, Venice, Rome and Jerusalem being the top four priorities in my utopian list. Paris - to see the Louvre, Rome - to see the St.Peters basilica, Venice - too see how badly its getting flooded and Jerusalem - because of O-Jerusalem ( the book ). And there is one special place - Taj Mahal on full moon night. I have been told by my parents that i have been there during a full moon night - the catch , i was 2 years old ( thought i have seen it one more time, this time doing a little better , i was 12). Thats seems to be the problem with my parents. I have been to Colombo, Kashmir and Maldives, but all between the age of 0 and 3 years. Nice places to go and get your diapers changed and cry aloud to irritate people on the plane. Kashmir, my mom told was devoid of terrorist then.

The irony - every time i get a three day holiday or weekend to make a nice short trip, i end up hauling my ass to banglore. I am going to Bangalore( the lure of the good pubs is too much ) this friday, but with a small difference - this time its four days. Can i kick myself.

PS : Man travels far and off, to come back and see what he went in search for in his home.

The one where i am bored

2005-04-01T04:10:00.000-08:00

I have been watching to much of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I just realised that yesterday night. You know when the opening sequence ends and then there is the title track, i generally forward that sequence in my Media Player. And u know what, nowadays i do that so perfectly that i land at the opening scene of the next sequence on dot. Thats when i realised that I am watching to much of it. So in a fit of hurry or over enthusiasm, i deleted all the episodes from my laptop. Boy! what a bad mistake. I have just finished calling my friends and asking him to bring the whole collection to the beach tonight. I don't know what i was thinking when I deleted it, the work of shaithan no doubt.
Well now I get why girls go drooling about Richard Gere, that guy is all the that a guy would want. He is so god damn sophisticated ( Yeah yeah i am straight ). "Shall we dance" was good in a very cheeky kind of way.( it got released in chennai last week around). Having learn t some ball-room dances myself in the final year of my college, i could totally relate to it.( In fact thats the only thing i did in my final sem of college- three cheers to BITS). And talking about Susan Sarandon, she is attractive in a very weird kind of way. And J-Lo, that female is all about the ass in the movie. She is hot and she tries to act, so she has done her job basically.
So another weekend and another of girls i know is getting engaged. I don't understand the point, in a span of 3 months some 10 girls I know got engaged. Cant digest the fact that someone of my age is going to get married. Don't know why, it disturbs me at some level. As joey says i dint even realise i had another level till then. (Dint i say, too much friends). Before u guys say "The one where i got bored", i am going to end the post. Happy weekend people.

Srivats

the girl

2005-03-25T19:46:00.000-08:00

Damn it i have fallen in love !....yeah man its actually nice to say that expression aloud. It been a pretty long time since i have put myself through the ordeals of these kind of feelings and still longer that i have been flung. Well ! i can actually feel the butterflies fluttering inside my heart, increasing my rate to a zillion times everytime i see her. Added to the fact that i can see her pretty face often nowadays, the feeling has literally opionated me through all my walking hours. The words never do justice to these kind of emotions and yet i am trying to put those very same thoughts to words, which even poets of great repute have failed. Yeah it doesnt matter that she comes in the hutch ad, and she is getting prepared to meet rahul dravid, and she is trying out different dresses, and she is different ways to greet dravid and that i cant met her in person. What the heck, i am enjoying the moment and its nice.!!

Basically the funda is ....

2005-03-15T02:18:00.000-08:00

Characters change, attitudes change, the setting change, the context may change but the bitsianess in my lingo is not going to change for my entire life . More than we speaking it, its about how we change the people around us to say " guss podu" and " its kind a sac". I was astounded one day when my cousin used the word guss, only to hear that one of her team mates is a bitsian and only the sac out is happening in their team. Many a days have I found humor in the faces of people when they are introduced to words like "Ob" and "comp". The later actually drove the system admins in my company to go mad at one point of time. " Hey sys ad, my comp has conked of again", only to be met by a black staring face going red at the ears.

The most beautiful part is I don't even realise why people stare at me, for me trimming the word computer to comp seems quite a logical thing to do, its been encoded in my chromosomes. Though i should admit that the "bitsian lingo" has been the butt of many a jokes with my cousins and friends, but i ain't changing people. I have lost count of the number of times i have infuriated my mom by using "the lingo"

me( over the phone) : "Amma I am in the insti, will call you later"
mom : where?
me : In the insti ma, as in institute!
mom : how am i supposed to know insti is institute
me : its ob isint it
mom : grrrr !

Here is a funny conversation I had with my team mate

me: Hey i am going to Hyd( read hide) tomorrow
team mate : where under the desk?

( hardest i have laughed in a long time )

It sure has landed me in trouble a couple of times, one wouldn't expect people to use words like "freak" and "fundas" and "gussing classes" in campus interviews. But try telling it to me. Just the other day I heard my friend telling some one his phone number - " nine double eight four three zuk six zuk six one". Well how absurd would that have sounded to people who are used to the concept of calling one of these " 000 " - zeros. All it needs is one month of stay in bits to pick up the nuances of the language, by the time you are at your home for oasis your average word length goes down by more than fifty percent. Before you know your neighbours become sidees and chatting with flat friends in the terrace become latcha sessions.

I heard the honorable mates of Meera Bhavan had some hilarious short-forms -Emily was Emergency
light, BTB was back to bhavan and lots more. Please girls, do fill us up on the remaining gems. So until then - the ever gussed, the ever sac out, basically

Srivats

drunken quizzes

2005-03-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

The pubs in chennai are so bad, they close up at 11 in the night, now come on can you believe it. Thats the time when you hop to the 3rd party in someplace like Bangalore. Ya! yesterday i got evicted out of a pub at 11 in the night, when all i wanted was one more drink of vodka. Whats up with that. And more problem is when i get a little sloshed up, i end up asking people trivia questions and whats up with that too.

I am quite the trivia buff, i take a great pride in the fact that i am one. Useless garbage of information cluttering the channels of mind, hindering my capacity to think ( and i don't even remember my moms birthday) . Quizzes excite me like no tv programs can and the live versions at college, i am almost get a orgasm. So i always took a lesser opinion on people with with less general awareness ( GK in its previous avatar), what losers in life I would think. But i am having second opinions now

Thats the result of a friends of mine who put things in perspective the other day, he told me that what is interesting to one may not be to the other. Suppose i think storing all these useless information in my mind is great, for the other person it may be useless junk of a information. So whats with all this judging attitude of mine.

PS: i am getting tired of the clinched people who are trying to be not clinched. I know its a vicious circle, but its coming back at me.

A wonderful weekend

2005-03-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Had a roaring time this weekend. Went to one of the most amazing beaches i have ever been to. Water was so blue and so clear that i actually thought I was transported to into one of these picture postcards of those sexy beaches in maldieves. It was like finding a treasure which was there in your own backyard for all these years and you had just discovered it.

Let me describe the scene- a beautiful clear azure sky, lots of snow-white egrets, a clear blue ocean which reflected the sun so well that we couldn't say where it ended and where the sun began, clear dazzling sand and four losers who were walking down the stretch in the 3 o clock sun( including a person who has seen the beach only twice before). It truly made my day. And adding to that a speed boat ride which thrilled, what more can i ask out of a weekend. ( will add the photos soon )

Of opinions....

2005-03-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

Blog reading has become an addiction these recent days, eating chunks out of my already small working hours. Who cares my boss is paying for it!. As i go through the blogs ( with a pang of jealousy ) there are distinctly two types - the one which appreciates and the one which criticizes( including mine ).

Rarely have i seen blogs which tread the middle ground. I am fighting hard to keep my foot hard on this middle ground and be a passive reporter of whats going on around. Should i always take a stand on all the things and should i always force some opinions on others. Cant I be the observer on the bank just observing the river called life, without any prejudice...I wonder.

The place where i grew up................

2005-03-02T01:31:00.000-08:00

Bad news fellas, i am going to loose my job again, all in a span of 7 months since I graduated from college. I am sitting here in the office wondering what to do - there are two options, one to search for another and two sit at home and enjoy life. I should say that i am very tempted to take the second one. But again lets not deviate into the regularities of my boring life, let me write about what i came her to.

Mylapore - a land of eternal mysticism, of infinite smells, of infinite sounds and sights. My dear old Mylapore, where i grew up as peddler chasing around kittens in one of its numerous temples which my grandmother would take me too. I grew around this place till seven after which we had to move to another part of the city, but my heats still there. Its the cultural cauldron of Chennai, the place where people assemble to celebrate the spirit of Dravidian culture.

Its a place for everybody, if you want to get a taste of good south-Indian tiffin there is Karpagam mess, if you want books there is vijaya stores, if you want confectioneries there is ambika applam, if you want peace there is the kapaleeshwarar temple, if you want music and dance there are innumerable number of sabas around. Gone or those days when i used to go each evening and play on top of the elephant structures in the temples and dangle my feet in the water of the temple ponds( there is no water now, so the honorable chennai corporation is planning to convert the pond area to flats). The place has got history wrapped around its shoulders to protect itself from the ugly world of concrete monsters. It is a favorite passtime of mine to snatch one of those bajjis from the numerous stalls and go for a walk around the market. My version of the cliched searching my roots kind of movie story. Mylapore was supposed to be the place where Britishers landed when the came to chennai, it used to be small fishing hamlet back then.

I used to reminisce about Mylapore with some of my college friends who shared a similar passion towards that place and discuss how great it used to be living around Mylapore and how quickly the place is loosing its charm due to improper city planning. Sirs and madams if you people come to chennai please go to this place to get a feel of what Chennai actually is instead of going to the beach and frolicking around in Spenecers

Sr

PS : Lady luck is a bitch

Monday morning blues.....

2005-02-21T03:17:00.000-08:00

Its been around seven months now that i have been in the proffesional world and even now every sunday night when i go to sleep, my heart hits a new low over that fact that i have to go to office tomorrow. An kind of void settles down my stomach and I just go to sleep hoping tomorrow never comes. But evidently they do and most of the time i make it office on time on a monday. Its like being again in school days, but altleast during school days we had PT on monday to look forward to. Now its just those hour long team meetings which remind how little you have worked over the previous week and how much you have to do during the coming one.

I am atleast happy that i had a break from the blues during my four years in college. Every day was the same there. Even shifting to an other job dint help, so i am planning to shift from this one still i land up in one where i actually look foward to monday mornings. I am guessing that will happen when i am 58. So if anyone reading the scrap have developed some methods to overcome the phenomenon which torments me, please do share it with me.

Damn you Filfare !!!

2005-02-16T21:43:00.000-08:00

After a long long time I managed to get my hand on a "Filmfare". Believe me, its one of the best way to time-pass in a saloon or a boring railway trip. Though i dont know what they achieve by interviewing the same people once in three months, but the interesting point is how these people change their views every time they are interviewed. The latest reading experience was not as fun as i would have expected it to be, and the reason was the way in which tamil cinema is portrayed.

Well "Kollywodd" ( a name i detest ) does churn out lots of stinking movies, but what makes it sustainable and watchable is because of a few brilliant individuals. And it is very sad to see that these few individuals are not given half the kind of media attention which their "khan clones" in the north get. Infact i would argue that the whole south-Indian filmdom is neglected. What offended me most was the way in which some lousy columnist had taken a dig on Kamal Hasan. Being a great fan of his, it would be kind of prejudiced to regale his talents myself, but lets call spade a spade. He is by far the best talent main stream cinema has produced. He can direct, sing, dance, script stories, pen screenplays and he can do them all well. Its not a fault of his he was shunned out of Bollywood during the mid 80s by some insecure actors( Bachan among them). The irony is Kamal doesn't receives 1/10 th of space which Bachan gets in mainstream media when he is definetly a far better actor by any conceivable standards. ( my view point ). Its not the 3 national awards and 16 filmfare award that matters for a person, all that matters is genuine appreciation from the people. Its even sadder to think that these Film Festivals held in Goa and other places have become a show case for Bollywood nor for the whole of Indian cinema.

Between Momooty, mohan lal and Kamal they can handle any role done by any one is the world of cinema. I cant even start counting the great talents the south inidan film world has produced -Mani ratnam, ar rehman, santosh sivan, sridevi are some i can mention. All i am saying is that the film critics and media should give these people some credit, for they have given us some memorable movies to watch and cherish for eons to come.

Importance of being single

2005-02-13T23:15:00.000-08:00

I dont have to stand in front of her house waiting for her to get decked up.

T ell her that she is the most beautiful thing that i have ever set eyes on .

S it through a boring cinema just because she likes it.

N ot having to hide the fact that you smoke when she is not around.

O ggle at another girl without feeling guilty.

T hink that you are the luckiest guy in the world when actually you are the unluckiest.

W orry constantly that she would meet some other guy better than you.

O rder a piece of jwellery, only to be exchanged the next day.

R un your ass of in the beach, so that you meet her there in the morning.

T o not actually break your head forwritting a poem for her on Val day.

H ope she will not call up during workhours and ask her to meet her for lunch.

I dont have to walk her home, even when you dined at a restraunt which is one street away from her home..

T urn your face and cry when she call you "brother" after having spent a months salary.

Happy Valentines day everybody!

Those radio days.......

2005-02-12T00:38:00.000-08:00

Here I am sitting here in the office blogging on a satruday when the world is enjoying its day off.Weekends are coming in and going out with an alarming frequency nowadays, so much sothat i have started measuring time in terms of weekends.

During college days we never used to have track of time, each day same as the other, the same routines, the same people and the same bad mess food , everyday was as U2 sang "sunday, bloody sunday". The last sem was the worst with just two courses and really nothing to do. I used to hunt innovative ideas to kill time and to fill up the void that had filled up my life and defeat the monotony which had became a dangeruous obsession. One such innovative idea that came out of our brainstroming session was to start a radio show in pilani using the our new lan network( thanks you ! alumni ). Nobody bought the idea, so two inspire soles ( thaku and me ) sat one day for about 12 hours and finished setting up and configuring the software that would help us broadcast us over the lan. When we sat together to decide the name, many ideas came forth but we finally decided on Radio bajji ( the connection being that mirchi bajji was famous in pilani....and since radio smirching was already a competitor...).

And so it began every night from 9 till midnight or more, me and my friends would sit in front of a laptop with mikes over out mouth forcing 100s of Bitsians to listen to the crap we were saying. It basically started out with me alone doing the jockeying, but considering the lukewarm responses that the show recieved, i thought i would have to convince other guys( better guys) to do the job. . We used to play songs, discuss current affairs and gossip about the latest happening on the campus, people used to send there dedications and requests through net sends. It was one of the best things i had done in life and it killed boredom big time. Jayanth, GMa and me crapping away to glory not caring about what the world things about what we are saying - three bored guys having fun. I dont know what it was, but something about this made us feel very happy. We used to go to sleep at around one o clock every night having decided what to do about tomorrows show. Each had a RJ alias and each of us had a tag line to say - mine was "Radio Bajji, where the music turns you on".

It went on for some 45 days before the enthu died. But now as i take a trip down the memory lane, the scenes from those fun filled days come back with astonishing clarity. For memory is the only thing we have and the only thing we saved for our future reference.

and BLACK it was

2005-02-11T22:26:00.000-08:00

Its been sometime now that my mind has become restless, after seeing an endless stream of worthless movies. Its not about the sixty or seventy rupees i waster every time, its more about the waste of time and the fact that i call myself a connoisseur of good cinema. And then yesterday i went to a movie which made my mind rest in peace, a movie called BLACK.

Its been a long time since i have sat in theater and hoped the movie would never end, that i could cling on to the magic for some more time. I dont know where to start my appreciation and where to end it, the whole movie was one whole entity of perfection. The location in which the whole drama unfolded was breathtaking. The lovely hills, the misty pine trees, the colonial houses were perfect settings, though they never belittled the few human characters who form the crux of the story. Bachan was out of the world, rani was awesome, the cinematography was exquisite, the background music gentle, the little girl was spellbinding and the director was in his elements(phew! i am running out of adjectives). It has changed the whole way i feel and think about physically challenged people.

If you haven't seen the movie please go and do that first, I bet my @$$ you will enjoy every moment of it

The beach factor

2005-02-10T04:06:00.000-08:00

If its 5 o clock on a Saturday or Sunday evening and if its not one those tsunami days you will find myself wandering the by lanes of besant nagar heading towards the beach. Its become a ritual of sorts every weekend to go the beach and hang around friends. A better place to waste time than sit in your home doing nothing,a place which overwhelms us with its grandeur and calm, a place which can accommodate thousands without suffocating its temporary tenants and above all a place where friends can get in touch without shelling 30 bucks for an "Iced Eskimo".

The beaches of madras have embroided into the fabric of the city life like no other entities have and it is because of its grand design that the fabrics is worth wearing.

Its charm in the morning is even better, its a pity that i dont go there every morning to jog. The morning wind wafts across the sand to caress you cheeks, carrying with it a potpourri of senses. The smell of the sea, the sight of the rising sun, the sound of the waves,the feel of the salty air, you would never want a better day to start a day.If morning is for serene then the
evening is surely for the fun -especially if it is a weekend.

Lovers groping in the corner, guys playing football, groups of college students smoking away to glory, a group of above sixty people looking disgustingly at the college guys, the fortunetellers, the sundal walla, the groundnut vendors, the shear amount of characters a beach gravitates towards itself is amazing. It was heart wrenching to see a deserted after the tsunami, a
stage set for infinite characters is indeed difficult to watch without them. Its also very happy to see that beaches are relatively cleaner due to governments efforts and increasing general awareness. Its my dream that one day i would buy a house with a french window facing the see, for that to happen i would have to work hard and earn enough money, so i would better get back to work.

panelist and me

2005-02-07T20:24:00.000-08:00

Something happens when i sit down for an interview. The panel starts to behave at their bitchiest best and i start to behave at my "not so interested" best. After attended a considerable amount of interviews, i had now seriously come to doubt the purpose of the exercise. What do they try to achieve by trying to test humans patience for some thirty minutes -so many meaningless questions, so many sarcastic remarks. A well conducted interview nowadays instills a fear in a persons mind, "Why dint they screw me , does it mean that i am already out of contention?". A transcript from one of my recent interview

Panelist 1 : Why dint you shave?

me: I have a skin disorder...doctor advised me not to shave too often

P1: Does the same apply to your hair

me: nothing is wrong with the skin in my head sir

P2: so can i ask you some questions in electronics

me: i guess...though i have lost touch with electronics...been 2 years since i had gone newhere near it.

( lots of electronics question...answered some 30% of it)

P1: who won the nobel price for peace this year

me: Kenyan female.dont remember the name exactly

P2:Who won it for literature

me:Austrian female, dint receive the prize in Oslo. got it in her home one month back. don't remember the name

P1: I dint ask the country name, i asked the name of the female

me: no good with remembering names sir

P1: do u smoke

me:@#$%%%

P1: do u booze

me: once in 6 months

P2: have a girlfriend

me:Searching for one

P1:Why MBA

me :Want to start a company in the future. blah blah blah

P2: what kind of CEO will u be if you don't remember names

me: will remember name that matters to me most(sweating...and want to escape badly)

P2: whats moores law

me: told him( at last i answered a question in electronics)

P2:Do you like Delhi

me: No that much

P1: how was life in Pilani

me: Enjoyed myself thoroughly

P1: Can see that from your grades

me:(Please don't make me cry) Grades aren't really a representation of ones potential

P1: U think so

me: yes pretty much

and like this it went for some 5 minutes.

I came out of the room drenched in sweat and I felt as if a truck had hit me and in a sense pleased that i had given one of my best interviews.

We the people

2005-02-04T01:58:00.000-08:00

Thinking of all the whining i had come across. I thought it was worth dedicating a blog to it. Being a major contributor myself i would have to admit that it had finally gotten on to my nerves. Damn the people! All I have been hearing for the past few month are constant criticisms, snap judgments and monotonous whinings. I am not sure whether my ears have developed an acumen for it or the realities have life have at last caught up with the people around me. Are we all really qualified enough to comment on everything that goes wrong around us - the Indian beaurocracy, cricket team, government( can pardon people for this), lack of medals in Olympics, tsunami relief and list goes on. Shouldnt people sit back and reflect on their contributions to the very things they are complaining.

Do any of them know how it is to face 150 kmph ball which comes right at you crotch, do any of them know how it is juggle between threatening politicians and demanding citizens - nooo!. But everyone seems to be qualified to give a comment on every functioning entity on Indian soil. The media has become the prime exponent of this disease. Dint it strike Barka Dutt to praise the Collector of Nagapattinam (who evidently did a great job)between her constant barraging of relief inediquacies. NDTV nowadays takes opinion from anybody who has a Dr before or NGO after their name. Constructive criticism has become an anectode of an unknown era. Sidhuism has become a fashion statement. Rajdeep Sardesai and Barka Dutt are the modern day heroes and finally criticism has spawned a whole media industry around it.

I think its high time the media and the public move away from the all out attack on the system and maybe move towards making a change from within.

Opsiee ! did i just whine about peoples whining ways!

The great Indian MindSet

2005-02-02T19:31:00.000-08:00

There are lot of things attributed to the fact that India is shining, let me bring out a weird angle to it. The foremost reason to surging economy and bulging pockets is the great Indianmindset - his selfless dedication to his job. Haven't us all been through the constant 10 hour routine of sitting in front of a machine, cursing the guy who invented it.
Most Indians have a peculiar affiliation ( which i dont share ) to their job which makes them forget about their own life. How many wives and mother and sisters and sons and daughters have lost half their life waiting for their loved one to come back from work. Cant we ever say no to out bosses - does that word even exists in the vocabulary of the Indian worker. Some may call it dedication, but should it pave way to our own exploitation. With an attitude like this, no wonder companies are flocking to set up shop in India. Lets face facts, no body outsources rocket science to India. All they outsource is what i called "grudge job" which does requires more dedication than trey matter. So case of point: the moment the Indian worker starts feeling bored or starts complaining about long hours, the bubble will burst and bring the end to all the "shining" thats happening around us.
I am not saying start a revolution but at least we should all have the guts to stand up say -"Look boss, i have life out there. I have a girl friend, a mother or a wife who is expecting me to spend some quality time with them. So screw you and your project, I am going home".
Will we ever have the guts to do this - I keep wondering.

i am bloggin

2005-02-01T01:20:00.000-08:00

it has taken me exactly one month to actually fullfill my new years resolution which is not to blog but to spread wisdom to fellow homo-sapiens. So if you are too bored or too depressed please do step into my wierd world of fantasy, dreams and lots of whining.